Society for Endocrinology Dale Medal Lecture

Dr C Ronald Kahn was born in Louisville, KY and received
his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Louisville. After
training in internal medicine at Barnes Hospital, St Louis, MO, he joined the
NIH as a Clinical Associate in the Endocrinology Branch. Over the next 11
years, he rose to become the Head of the Section on Cellular and Molecular
Physiology, Diabetes Branch in the National Institute of Diabetes &
Digestive & Kidney Diseases. In 1981, Dr’Kahn moved to Boston to become
Research Director at the Joslin Diabetes Center; Chief, Diabetes and Metabolism
Division, Brigham and Women's Hospital; and Associate Professor of
Medicine at Harvard Medical School. In 1984, he became Professor of Medicine at
Harvard and in 1986 was awarded the Mary K Iacocca Professorship. During his
tenure, Joslin's research program, grew from $2 million to over $25
million, with a staff of over 200 people. In 1998, he was named Executive Vice
President and, in 2000, President and Director of the Joslin Diabetes Center.

Dr Kahn is the pre-eminent investigator of insulin
signal transduction and mechanisms of altered signalling in disease. His
laboratory has produced multiple seminal observations regarding the insulin
receptor kinase, its substrates, the molecular components of the insulin signalling
network, and their alterations in disease. This body of work has formed the
basis for our contemporary understanding of diabetes and insulin action, and
has been more central to work in this field than any discovery of insulin
itself.